That T. Ngo

Biotechnological Applications of Plant Cultures presents the most updated reviews on current techniques in plant culture in the field. The plant kingdom continues to be a rich reservoir of pharmaceuticals for medicine, providing us with a variety of drugs from the most common one, acetylsalicylate, to the more recently discovered, powerful, anti-cancer drug, Taxol. Plant culture techniques play a pivotal role in providing a constant and unlimited supply of uniform and reproducible materials for experimentation. In addition to its importance in the discovery of new medicines, plant culture technology plays an even more significant role in solving world hunger by developing agricultural crops that provide both higher yield and more resistance to pathogens and adverse environmental and climatic conditions. The book covers four broad areas: production of secondary metabolites by plant cells; plant cell transformation techniques; breeding and micropropagation techniques; and plant cell and tissue bioreactor design.